The Joyous Paintings of FRED VAN ORMER

 

 

 

 

MATISSE SAID THAT PAINTING SHOULD BRING GREAT JOY TO BOTH THE VIEWER AND TO THE ARTIST.  FRED VAN ORMER BELIEVED, QUITE STRONGLY, THAT THE ONLY REASON FOR PAINTING IS TO BRING SOME HAPPINESS INTO THE WORLD.

 

FRED VAN ORMER was born in South Dakota in 1927 and just recently left us in 2004.  He went to Yankton College, served in the Korean War, and went to art school in Chicago.  He worked for an interior designer in St. Louis before moving to San Francisco in 1954. He moved to paradise which is what he called San Diego in 2000.  Van Ormer worked in the design world for many years and painted as a full time occupation for the past 30 years.  His exuberant paintings are full of unusual color combinations and complex patterns with flowers as the primary focal point.  Matisse with his strong use of color is, of course, “GOD”!  Van Ormer has painted and shown at Charleston Farmhouse in England which was the gathering place for the Bloomsbury painters who loved patterns.  Van Ormer’s colors, however, are California sunshine as compared to the muted colors of the English painters.

 

Ralph Pomeroy, Former contributing editor to Art News, Arts and Art and Artist (London), writes “The initial impact of Fred Van Ormer's paintings is that of colour and pattern.  The colour is strong and multiple.  The patterns are complex.   These patterns are presented as background and set in a kind of scaffold of bands and borders creating a structure in which flowers, vases, fruit and vegetables (and a comical chicken now and then) thrive.  All of this goes together, interestingly, and adheres to a major tenet of 20th Century Modernism  - the belief in the inherent flatness of the picture plane.  And yet within this visible shallowness there is no feeling of airlessness.  Maybe it is the beauty of the colour and the razzle-dazzle of the patterns that evokes an almost dance-like joyfulness.Exuberance, playfulness come to mind.  Things are in motion.  Bands and borders are often invaded by (fellow) forms of flowers and leaves.  A mysterious new element has most recently appeared in the non-geometric form of (ameba) or shrimp-like shapes - moonlike, tad-pole-like, ghostlike in their suspension, seeming to float across the surface of the canvas. Matisse is a powerful influence especially in his use of fabrics and curtains from North Africa and the Middle East.  Another influence, of a very different kind, is Howard Hodgkin's habit of bestowing specific titles referring to people and places to wholly abstract works.  This I suspect has to do with the importance of emotion - the painter's feelings about his work.”.

FRED VAN ORMER:

FRED VAN ORMER Memorial Painting Exhibition

Saturday, June 10, 2006 from 6 pm

as part of Ray at Night

Andrea Rushing Fine Art Gallery

3803 Ray Street, San Diego CA, 92104

For more info: 619.294.9240 www.arushingfinearts.com

 

FRED VAN ORMER

at the Artful Healing Program

Scripps Memorial Hospital, Administrative Hall

April 6 through the end of June

9888 Genesee Avenue, La Jolla, CA. 92037. 858.626.4123

For more info: 619.414.8929 www.studiovivace.com

 

One man exhibitions:

Bread and Cie, San Diego, CA 2004, 2005

A Biento, Houston, Texas, April 2002

Blue House, McClean, Virginia, 2001, 2003

Harmony Hall, Antiqua,  2001, 2002, 2003, 2004

Quetzel, San Francisco, CA  1999,2000, 2001

Vanderbilt, Napa Valley, St. Helena, CA 1999, 2000

Mary Ogilvie Gallery, St. Anne’s College, Oxford University, 1998

Crumps, Fresno, CA., 1997, 1998

Bona, Houston, Tx., 1995, 1996

Charleston Farm House, Firle near Lewes, England, 1994,1999

Made in France, Nashville, TN., 1994

Gloriousa, Calistoga, CA., 1994, 1995

Brandt-Schneider, St. Helena, CA., 1993

Plums, Fresno, CA., 1992

Merline’s, San Francisco, CA., 1983, 1984, 1986

                                                           

Selected Group Shows:

Art4Kidz, Galerie d’Art International, San Diego CA, 2005

COVA Open Studios, San Diego, CA, 2003, 2004

Sony Art Walk, San Diego, CA 2000 (Menagerie), 2001, 2002, 2003 (featured artist), 2004

The Blue House, McClean, VA., 1998

La Jolla Art Festival, La Jolla, CA., 1997

Gallery 500, Philadelphia, Penn., 1994

Pasadena Garden Show, Pasadena, CA. 1993, 1995, 1997

Edgewood Garden Exhibition, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997, 1998

Francis Kyle, London, England, 1993,1999

Brente, Lemvig, Denmark, 1993

Plums, Fresno, CA., 1991

Artworks, Seattle, WA., 1992

 

Contact for more information:

SAN FRANSICO
Clementine  Hyndman 707 2938151

SAN DIEGO

Patricia Frischer 760 943 0148

1812 Adams Avenue,